Climate Breakdown Research Articles

“It Can't Just Be the Younger People”: Exploring Young Activists' Perspectives on Intergenerational Tensions and Solidarities for Climate Justice

ABSTRACTYouth activism for climate justice is inherently intergenerational. Fundamentally, young activists demand urgent action by today's adult power‐holders for the security and well‐being of their own and future generations. Despite intergenerationality being core to the movement, few studies with young activists have explored their views and experiences of intergenerational relations and tensions and how to advance intergenerational solidarities for climate justice. Addressing these critical topics, the present study used in‐depth interviews with young activists (ages 15–17) in the climate justice movement across the US. Themes generated through reflexive thematic analysis centre on: (1) youths' adoption of “next generation” and “last generation” identities, respectively emphasising the heightened climate risks faced by their own and future generations, and the closing window of opportunity to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown; (2) their experiences of hostile and benevolent adultism; and (3) the need for adults to listen to, take seriously, centre, amplify, and—most importantly—respond to youths' demands. They urge adults, particularly those in powerful positions, to use their age‐based privilege, political enfranchisement, material resources, professional status, and decision‐making authority to uplift young people's voices and tangibly advance climate justice through solidarity‐driven intergenerational partnerships and action. Implications for youth‐centred research and policy are discussed.

Efficient statistical inference methods for assessing changes in species’ populations using citizen science data

Abstract The global decline of biodiversity, driven by habitat degradation and climate breakdown, is a significant concern. Accurate measures of change are crucial to provide reliable evidence of species’ population changes. Meanwhile citizen science data have witnessed a remarkable expansion in both quantity and sources and serve as the foundation for assessing species’ status. The growing data reservoir presents opportunities for novel and improved inference but often comes with computational costs: computational efficiency is paramount, especially as regular analysis updates are necessary. Building upon recent research, we present illustrations of computationally efficient methods for fitting new models, applied to three major citizen science data sets for butterflies. We extend a method for modelling abundance changes of seasonal organisms, firstly to accommodate multiple years of count data efficiently, and secondly for application to counts from a snapshot mass-participation survey. We also present a variational inference approach for fitting occupancy models efficiently to opportunistic citizen science data. The continuous growth of citizen science data offers unprecedented opportunities to enhance our understanding of how species respond to anthropogenic pressures. Efficient techniques in fitting new models are vital for accurately assessing species’ status, supporting policy-making, setting measurable targets, and enabling effective conservation efforts.

Entrepreneurship Educators in an Age of Climate and Ecological Breakdown

It is stated, with increasing frequency and urgency, that Entrepreneurship Education should help society move past Business as Usual, the unsustainable development pathway which depletes communities and is driving climate and ecological breakdown. We agree with this ideal, but our lived experience suggests that the everyday philosophy and practice of mainstream Entrepreneurship Education means this shift will be challenging for many educators. Mainstream narratives of economic growth and tools such as Business Model Canvas erase social and ecological concerns, compromising the Entrepreneurship Educator in the way they prioritize economic concerns over un/sustainability. Our question is, given the demand for transformation in Entrepreneurship Education, how do we—educators—change ourselves and our practice? In this paper we blend action-based accounts of change with interpretations from a dialogic perspective to elaborate how Entrepreneurship Educators can, and already are, taking action in light of climate and ecological breakdown. We provide a way of thinking about how change happens—in and through relations and dialogue between people—and new conceptual directions—the metacrisis and time between worlds—which aim to contribute a source of agency for educators.

Collapse awareness in the face of climate breakdown and urbicide

ABSTRACT ‘Collapse awareness’ is a complex attunement to a radically insecure present and future that reaches beyond known logics of security such as prevention, resilience, or preparedness. Bringing together two very different empirical fields – planetary ecological destruction and the urbicide taking place in the war in Ukraine – the article introduces collapse awareness as a particular form of situational awareness that is concerned with the existential loss of living environments in the Anthropocene. We analyse intellectual and activist interventions in the face of the ecological crisis, on the one hand, and the everyday and aesthetic forms of dealing with the ongoing shelling of urban architecture and infrastructure, on the other. Working through these two fields of attention we propose five overarching temporal and affective features of collapse awareness in the face of existential destruction: how it moves beyond known security rationales in its grappling with radical insecurity; how it attaches itself to ‘truth’ in particular ways; how it responds to the violence of the Anthropocene; how it evokes a ‘we’ that has yet to be formed; and how it negotiates despair and hope in the face of catastrophic ruin.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence for Heat Stress Management in Ruminant Livestock.

Heat stress impacts ruminant livestock production on varied levels in this alarming climate breakdown scenario. The drastic effects of the global climate change-associated heat stress in ruminant livestock demands constructive evaluation of animal performance bordering on effective monitoring systems. In this climate-smart digital age, adoption of advanced and developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies is gaining traction for efficient heat stress management. AI has widely penetrated the climate sensitive ruminant livestock sector due to its promising and plausible scope in assessing production risks and the climate resilience of ruminant livestock. Significant improvement has been achieved alongside the adoption of novel AI algorithms to evaluate the performance of ruminant livestock. These AI-powered tools have the robustness and competence to expand the evaluation of animal performance and help in minimising the production losses associated with heat stress in ruminant livestock. Advanced heat stress management through automated monitoring of heat stress in ruminant livestock based on behaviour, physiology and animal health responses have been widely accepted due to the evolution of technologies like machine learning (ML), neural networks and deep learning (DL). The AI-enabled tools involving automated data collection, pre-processing, data wrangling, development of appropriate algorithms, and deployment of models assist the livestock producers in decision-making based on real-time monitoring and act as early-stage warning systems to forecast disease dynamics based on prediction models. Due to the convincing performance, precision, and accuracy of AI models, the climate-smart livestock production imbibes AI technologies for scaled use in the successful reducing of heat stress in ruminant livestock, thereby ensuring sustainable livestock production and safeguarding the global economy.

Beyond tick boxes: re-imagining education for sustainable development in higher education

ABSTRACT We are in an era of climate breakdown, mass extinction and global injustice. Through analysis of the new UK Professional Standards Framework (PSF) for academics, this paper explores some global challenges of incorporating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the neoliberal university. The PSF is a globally recognised framework for professional development, yet its recent review concluded that ESD could not be included within it. The paper discusses the disconnect between the growing recognition of the need for education that responds to our planetary predicament and the particular logics and rationalities of a neoliberal framework. In its critique of the underpinning assumptions of the PSF and its wider context, it discusses (im)possibilities of values and unlearning in a performativity driven setting. Next, it provides generative provocations to those using such frameworks for their own professional development or to support the development of peers. It invites academics to find new ways of using the limits of these narrow professional development practices as prefigurative for a less disconnected university where other possibilities for responding to our planetary predicament can be imagined.

Elephants, Ecological Grief, and Art Therapy

Climate change is a well-documented challenge for human societies where human actions have spurred global warming leading to climate breakdown. Ecological disasters are already affecting the mental health of many people, and this is escalating. By painting elephants, I address ambiguous loss and demonstrate the power of art therapy to inform grief work and ecological grief as humanity’s shared trauma. Seen through the lens of elephants, one realizes the many connections between elephant and human societies, including ancestral memories, experience of attachment and trauma, and capacities to heal. Maintaining a consistent art practice helps one make sense of the senseless and deal with grief as an act of resilience, self-and-planetary care, and ethics, thereby having implications for art therapists.

Degrowth pedagogies: a manifesto for Earth-centred theatre training

I am proposing a manifesto for degrowth pedagogies. Designed for Higher Education institutions and theatre pedagogues, I argue the need to develop a system of theatre training based on degrowth theory. Developed from French intellectual thought in the early 1970s, degrowth diagnoses the climate, ecological, socio-political and spiritual crises, as symptoms of capitalism’s growth imperative, with its impulse for ever-increasing productivity in spite of the direct and ever-increasing detriment to people and planet. The theatre sector exists in a position of subservience to this growth-centric, socio-economic model – under pressure to adopt growthist practices in theatrical production, such as high-carbon international touring; ideological conformism to attract ‘greenwashing’ corporate funding; among other phenomena. Yet, to avoid contributing to climate, ecological and societal breakdown, the theatre sector will need to understand and adopt degrowth practices. Theatre pedagogy is an ideal site to affect change. Theatre training institutions must undergo a transition towards new ways of serving their students, as well as local and global communities, while inviting new generations of theatre-makers to create differently; to consider how the aesthetics, forms and material realities of their practice can embody ‘slow’ and degrowth theatre.

Using participatory video in environmental research

Abstract Tackling environmental challenges that face humanity requires us to acknowledge new ways of working and to cross disciplinary boundaries. However, the methodological toolkit used by environmental researchers to explore the human attitudes, knowledge and behaviours that drive global challenges such as biodiversity loss and climate breakdown remains constrained. Here, we describe participatory video, a methodology for capturing and communicating knowledge, which goes beyond interviews, focus groups and participant observation. We draw from the literature and our own experience of conducting participatory video projects in Nepal, Guyana and Peru. We demonstrate the diverse ways in which the methodology can be applied to environmental research and highlight its strengths and limitations. Participatory video provides a more holistic understanding of environmental issues by using multiple types of data, its longer‐term engagement with issues, opening channels of communication between stakeholders, engaging a diversity of knowledge systems and advocating for transformative change. By taking a participatory video approach, environmental researchers may begin to counter commonplace criticisms about lack of diversity and entrenched colonialism. This simultaneously responds to wider calls for environmental research to engage with social justice issues, represent diverse voices, understand different contexts and acknowledge the role of power. Crucially, this helps build trust amongst all those involved. By demonstrating how we have successfully used participatory video in projects in conservation, ecology and climate science, we provide guidance for researchers looking to expand their methodological toolkit. Ultimately, we seek to improve the use of participatory methods to help support communities to tackle the environmental challenges that they face. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Our Spectral Gardens: An Ecological Re-Interpretation of The Ten Largest (1907) by Hilma af Klint

Archival research on artist Hilma af Klint explores how feminist networks and eco-vitalist beliefs underlie The Ten Largest, the Swedish painter’s most famous work. These findings re-position the series in relation to climate breakdown, and at a time when re-imagining the connections between people and things has become a cultural imperative. How we now approach the patterns of the past is further explored, as artistic research, with the painting series Our Spectral Gardens (2021-23). Here, parallel image roots define synthetic representations of nature and a reconsideration of eco-vitalism as a force of the present.

Contesting just transitions: Climate delay and the contradictions of labour environmentalism

The notion of ‘just transition’ (JT) is an attempt to align climate and energy objectives with the material concerns of industrial workers, frontline communities, and marginalised groups. Despite the potential for fusing social and environmental justice, there is growing concern that the concept is being mobilised in practice as a form of ‘climate delayism’: a problem more ambiguous than open forms of denialism as it draws in multiple and conflictual agents, practices, and discourses. Using an historical materialist framework, attentive to both energy-capital and capital-labour relations, we show how JT is vulnerable to forces and relations of climate delay across both fossil capital and climate capital hegemonic projects. We review this through an engagement with the climate obstructionism literature and the theory of labour environmentalism: the political engagement of trade unionists and workers with environmental issues. As tensions within the labour movement surface amidst the unsettling of the carbon capital hegemony, we assess the degree to which (organised) labour—as an internally differentiated, contradictory movement—is participating in climate breakdown through a ‘praxis of delay’. Trade unions and industrial workers are often implicated in resisting or undermining transitions, but this is related significantly to their structural power relations vis a vis the fossil hegemony. Notably, JT negotiations are themselves structurally embedded within the carbon capital economy. The general preferences of trade unions for social over environmental justice might be prevalent but are neither universal nor inevitable; JT is open and contested political terrain, and labour-environmental struggles remain imperative for building just energy futures.

China’s Transition to an Ecological Civilization: Strategies and Global Implications

ABSTRACT This article discusses China’s ambitious project of constructing an “ecological civilization,” attempting to balance continued economic growth and poverty alleviation with contributing to humanity’s shared project of preventing climate breakdown. It outlines China’s historical development since the Chinese Revolution, highlighting the rapid industrialization that lifted millions out of poverty but also led to significant environmental degradation. In recent years, China has shifted priorities towards green development, aiming to decarbonise its energy system. The article details China’s strategies and commitments to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, showcasing initiatives in reducing coal dependency, enhancing renewable energy capacity, innovating in clean technologies, and protecting biodiversity. These developments are positioning China as a key player in global environmental sustainability.

Rebooting Ecumenism, the Theological Equivalent of the Climate Crisis: The Role of Urgency and Accountability on the Road to Ecclesial Interdependence

This article puts forward the argument for the acute and urgent need to move from ecclesial self-sufficiency to ecclesial interdependency in the ecumenical process. The difficulties in ecumenical cooperation mirror those in the climate crisis, as despite a global crisis of relevance for Christianity and for the ecumenical movement, individual Churches, much like individual states, fail to work together effectively as they negotiate their own internal challenges. Not dissimilar to the ecological climate breakdown, what we understand as the history-bound reality of the Church will not be safeguarded and will not be made relevant in today’s globalised, pluralistic, interconnected, and dominantly secular, in many contexts, world, except by concerted action from all Churches.

The limits to the urban within multi-scalar energy transitions: Agency, infrastructure and ownership in the UK and Germany

This article critically interrogates the over-emphasis upon urban solutions when considering complex and multi-scalar energy infrastructures that must transition to low-carbon intensity for a sustainable future. While urban actors can play an important role in energy transition, their interventions are riven with difficulties, and at times failure, as they encounter challenges of politics, capacity and agency in a broader and multi-scalar governance landscape. Drawing upon the comparative and variegated political economies of energy infrastructure governance in Germany and the UK, this article makes three critical arguments. Firstly, it contends that patterns of ownership of key infrastructures, particularly in the highly privatised context of the UK but also in Germany’s more diversified energy market, trouble urban-level interventions. Secondly, against a backdrop of post-financial crash austerity, we raise the issue of capacity at an urban level, principally concerning the financing and technical administration of urban infrastructural ‘solutions’. Thirdly, the entrenched politics of neoliberalisation, its multi-scalar articulations and in particular discourses of marketisation and competition, while distinct across the two contexts, shape the possibilities, imaginaries and support available for local-level change in complex infrastructures. The article points to differential urban capacities and governance conditions that require a greater degree of nuance in sustainability narratives, and a critical conversation around the need for multi-scalar coordination in energy transitions, in order to avert catastrophic climate breakdown.

The Nexus of Climate Change and Policing: Guidelines to Improve Climate Change Governance

Abstract: Climate change has far-reaching ramifications for society, and its consequences cross conventional boundaries and affect many facets of life. While climate change's environmental, economic, social, and health consequences have received considerable attention, an important but frequently overlooked aspect of dealing with this crisis is its intersection with public safety and security and how law enforcement must be prepared to deal with climate breakdown. Climate change impacts and other natural catastrophes create complicated problems for governments in implementing appropriate police governance, notably regarding disaster risk reduction and management. Rising temperatures, shifting weather patterns, catastrophic weather events, and sea-level rise are just a few of the global crisis manifestations causing havoc in these areas. Climate change has repercussions across society, affecting millions and jeopardizing their livelihoods. Drought, desertification, land degradation, water shortages, and food insecurity are some of the effects that are becoming increasingly prevalent with the rise in global temperatures. Climate change is viewed as a risk multiplier because it exacerbates many criminal and illicit activities. For example, human trafficking has several links to climate change. Furthermore, the disruption of migration patterns due to climate change is a particular concern, introducing an additional layer of complexity for law enforcement. The urgent necessity for comprehensive and context-specific solutions to improve law enforcement institutions' resilience and adaptive capabilities, particularly in developing courtiers, is emphasized. Law enforcement measures must be enhanced, as well as the formulation of community policing strategies and the promotion of inter and intra-service collaboration. This is not a hypothetical issue; it is a live reality that demands immediate attention, novel solutions, and cross-sector collaboration.

Interrupted rhythms and uncertain futures: Mortgage finance and the (spatio-) temporalities of climate breakdown

ABSTRACT As intensifying climate-related disasters strike cities across the United States, they are provoking rising concern for the stability of the U.S. housing market and broader financial system. How homeowners, mortgage lenders, federal institutions/regulators, and investors will variously encounter and manage climate risk is an urgent question for urban scholars, as is who might bear the costs of restabilizing mortgage finance under new breakdowns. This paper’s multi-scalar intervention draws on financial “following” methods to explore how climate risks are being experienced and governed at multiple illustrative moments of U.S. mortgage finance: (1) working households at the front line of urban climate impacts, (2) mortgage professionals brokering loans to them, (3) government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) negotiating incoming federal climate risk disclosure requirements, and (4) capital markets off-taking GSE risks through financial derivatives like credit risk transfers. Emerging concerns include ruptures between household risks and financial system-preserving responses and new dangers of “climate redlining.”

Book review: Rupert Read, Why Climate Breakdown Matters (Bloomsbury, London 2022) 232 pp.

Book review: Rupert Read, Why Climate Breakdown Matters (Bloomsbury, London 2022) 232 pp.

After Neoliberalism: Economic Theory and Policy in the Polycrisis1

AbstractMainstream economic theory and policy have struggled to address (and in some cases have made worse) the multiple economic crises since 2008—global financial crash, austerity, stalled productivity, wage stagnation, rising inequality, inflation, climate and environmental breakdown. At the root of this failure is the ‘ontological individualism’ which underpins neoclassical economic theory: the belief that individual households and firms are sovereign actors. It proposes in its place a premise of ‘ontological institutionism’—the view that economic behaviour is primarily influenced by the institutional structures and rules within which it occurs. Commonplace in other social sciences, this view radically changes economic analysis and policy prescription. Based on an explicit ethical definition of policy objectives, the article offers an ‘institutionally pluralist’ view proposing different kinds of institutions for five different spheres of economic life. Arguing that economic policy should be seen as a process of institutional design (not simply making markets more efficient), it offers some illustrative policy proposals in key fields, from climate change to business investment.

Relating at the Edge of the World: Anthropocene Encounters in the Work of Philipp Weiss

Philipp Weiss’s five-volume debut novel Am Weltenrand sitzen die Menschen und lachen (2018) features five contrasting protagonists who navigate fractured relationships amid the damaged lifeworlds of industrial modernity, the atomizing tendencies of global capitalism and the pitfalls of ever-optimizing virtuality. This article reads Am Weltenrand as Anthropocene literature, showing how the difficulty and necessity of forming and sustaining close interpersonal and interspecies relationships are central concerns for Weiss in his exploration of the Anthropocene predicament. Across its five volumes, the pentalogy portrays vexed relationality — from missed meetings and misunderstandings to conflicts and failures to relate — as a symptom and effect of ecological crisis. In response to ecological crisis and climate breakdown, Am Weltenrand counters radical pessimism with a renewed emphasis on relationality and dialogue.

‘The Work That Reconnects’: a groupwork methodology for enhancing adaptive responses to the climate and ecological crisis

Abstract The dominant economic, political and sociocultural system is leading the Earth towards climate and ecological breakdown (IPCC, 2023) as well as causing adverse mental, physical and social health consequences (Eisenberg-Guyot and Prins, 2022). To address these inter-related crises there is an urgent need for cultural evolution to life-sustaining ways of living and organising human life (Brooks et al., 2018). This requires concurrent psychological and ideological shifts and psychological contexts of support, in which people can explore their relationship with, and response to, the planetary predicament and the roles they would like to play in its transformation. The Work That Reconnects (WTR) (Macy and Brown, 2014) is a groupwork methodology developed to address this need. It consists of a set of philosophical and psychological teachings and experiential practices drawn from deep ecology, living systems thinking, Buddhism, and indigenous, spiritual and other wisdom traditions. It originated outside the field of CBT and psychotherapy, within activist movements, within which it is an increasingly well-known methodology for psychological support. The WTR has many characteristics which align with cognitive behavioural approaches with regard to processes, techniques and mechanisms of change. The WTR has, as yet, received minimal scientific research attention. The aim of this paper is to raise awareness of the methodology within the cognitive behavioural field, introducing philosophies, concepts, and techniques that may be of utility to CBT practitioners and stimulate research and evaluation of a methodology with potential to address psychological needs at this time. Key learning aims (1) To learn about a groupwork methodology, the Work That Reconnects (WTR), for developing adaptive resilience, motivation, agency and wellbeing when facing concerns about the world. (2) To learn about the four stages of the spiral of practices of the Work That Reconnects: gratitude, honouring our pain for the world, seeing with new and ancient eyes, and going forth. (3) To understand the key concepts of the model including cultural schemas such as ‘the three stories of our time’ and application of living systems thinking to create cognitive and behavioural shifts towards adaptive action. (4) To explore the parallels with cognitive behavioural approaches, review the evidence base, highlight the need for further research, and outline areas for investigation. (5) To suggest ways in which the WTR can inform individual therapy for climate and ecological concerns.